A Black sailor who died within the assault on Pearl Harbor was lastly laid to relaxation in his dwelling state of North Carolina, almost 84 years after his loss of life.
Born in Vass, North Carolina, Navy Mess Attendant third Class Neil D. Frye enlisted within the Navy in July 1940.
He labored within the Messman Department, a racially segregated division of the U.S. Navy that was virtually completely made up of African-American, Asian, and overseas service members who have been accountable for feeding and serving officers.
“He enlisted within the Navy in a time the place, you understand, Black males have been thought of second-class. However he fought for this nation with the identical values,” his niece Carol Frye-Davis instructed WTVD.
In Oct. 1941, Frye’s mom wrote the Navy requesting that Frye be transferred to a base in Rhode Island the place his brother was stationed, however Frye by no means made his personal private request by the point the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
He was on the united statesWest Virginia when the battleship was struck by a number of bombs and torpedoes, inflicting it to sink to the underside of the harbor.
Frye was amongst 106 crew members who died, in line with The Pentagon’s Protection POW/MIA Accounting Company (DPAA). He was 20.
In 2014, Frye’s household began attending the DPAA’s regional conferences the place the company would supply updates on whether or not they’d recovered and recognized stays of lacking troopers.
In 2017, the DPAA exhumed the stays of 35 unidentified sailors from the united statesWest Virginia who couldn’t be recognized on the time of their restoration, WHRO reported. Frye’s household submitted DNA samples in more moderen years, hoping that a kind of sailors could be a match.
The household mentioned they acquired a optimistic ID for Frye’s stays in September 2024. Three months later, The DPAA formally introduced that Frye’s stays had been accounted for.
Frye was laid to relaxation with full navy honors at Sandhills State Veterans Cemetery in Spring Lake, North Carolina on April 3, which might have been his 104th birthday.
He was additionally posthumously awarded a Purple Coronary heart Medal and a Fight Motion Ribbon.
“It’s been an emotional, however an attractive expertise,” Frye-Davis mentioned. “He had his life forward of him and he was lower down at 20, however he did it for this nation.”
Frye had 9 siblings, solely one in all whom continues to be dwelling.
“I used to be extra completely happy than unhappy as a result of I knew that they’d discovered him,” Frye’s youngest sister, 87-year-old Mary Frye McCrimmon mentioned. “I knew the place he was. We didn’t must marvel.”
